lundi 24 décembre 2012

2012-12-21-207

17-year-old Brittany Wenger develops artificial brain to diagnose cancer

A 17-year-old girl from Florida has spent the last several years of her life developing an ‘artificial brain’ that can diagnose cancer. Using various computer-programming languages, Brittany Wenger created a cloud-based artificial neural network that can assess tissue samples for signs of breast cancer.

Wenger wanted to design a tool for doctors to examine and diagnose cancer without making the process too invasive. The artificial neural network along with a procedure called Fine Needle Aspirate may help to ease the process of having lumps examined.

The artificial neural network has data collected from 7.6 million trials, and according to Wenger, the Java-based artificial brain is 99.1 percent sensitive to malignancy.

What’s even more amazing is that Wenger’s network is 4.97 percent more sensitive to malignancy than three other commercially available networks. Wenger is aiming to deploy her network in hospitals and extend her dataset to include other cancers.

“It will require a little bit of coding and tweaking, but it would be very easy to adapt it so it could diagnose other types of cancer and potentially other medical problems,” said the 17-year-old whiz kid.

She recently won first place in the Google Science Fair project, and for all her hard work she was awarded a $50,000 scholarship, an internship with the sponsor, and a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands.

"Ive never been to South America," she said excitedly.

We can imagine that South America wont be the only destination for this young lady in the future.

Source: MSNBC



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